Part 7 (1/2)

A feords on the ical and classical allusions in the _Commedia_ may be useful to those who are not familiar with Greek and Latin literature The subject is a very wide one, and Dante's treaty is very curious It is especially noticeable in the _Purgatory_, where every sin and its contrary virtue are illustrated by a pair of examples from Scripture history on the one hand, and Greek or Roend (for both seem alike to him) on the other

Sloth, for instance, is exeht scorn” of the pro back fro into the hill country with haste, and Caesar dashi+ng into Spain are the chosen ain, at the very outset of the poem, we find St Paul and aeneas quoted as the two instances of living men who have been permitted to see the future world; and Dante professes his oorthiness to be put on a level with them, apparently without a hint that he holds the _aeneid_ any lower as an authority than the Epistle to the Corinthians In a practically pagan humanist of the days of Leo X this would hardly surprise us; but it is, at first sight, not a little astonishi+ng in the case of a poet to whom the Christian Church and Christian revelation were vital truths It is, however, clear that to the hest authority, was in y, only ”first a its peers” Aquinas quotes Aristotle, the Scriptures, and the Fathers almost indiscri the subject frouide and philosopher the poet Virgil, who, as the Middle Ages dee of the first origin of the Eotten that, to Dante, Church and Empire were merely two aspects of one Divine institution Brutus and Cassius are hardly less guilty than Judas; and that simply from the official point of view, for there is no attempt to sanctify, much less to deify, Caesar as an individual None the less is the work that he did holy, and this holiness communicates itself, as readers of the _De Monarchia_ will res by which Divine Providence prepared the way for it The finger of God is no less plainly to be seen in the victory of aeneas over Turnus or of the Roe of the Israelites across the Red Sea, or the repulse of the assyrians Ro so, we shall not be surprised to find that a certain authority attaches to the literature of either one of the chosen peoples Did they conflict, doubtless the poet, as an orthodox Catholic, would adive way to Isaiah; but he would in all probability decline to allow that they could conflict, at all events within the region common to them both No doubt, just as Caesar and Peter have, besides their common domain, functions peculiar to each, wherein Caesar may not interfere with Peter, or as Aristotle round that the Church has _ xxv 63 as an allusion to Aristotle), so il or Lucan becoy (Statius, who does teach theology, as in the passage just referred to, is, it il at all events holds scrupulously aloof fro of his functions; and within his own limits his authority is infallible Why, then, should we not accept his account of the infernal regions as trustworthy? He tells us that Charon is the ferryman who carries the souls across to the nether world; Minos the judge who sentences thereat personage in those regions Furies sit over the inner gate; Gorgons and Harpies play their parts Holy Scripture has nothing to say against these conceptions; so there is nothing to prevent our accepting Virgil's account, and expanding it into mediaeval precision and symmetry Thus we have all the official hierarchy of hell ready provided As has already been observed, it is not until Dante reaches a point very far down that anything like e hout the upper circles the work, whether of tor, is perfory If we except the Giants, who seem to occupy a kind of interaoler, Geryon is the last of these eof his own invention: for there is little in coe monster with the face of a just ht perhaps be expected when there was plenty of material to hand in Tuscany, less use issubjects for punish the virtuous heathen several find their place; but it may be doubted whether Electra or Orpheus were to Dante any less historical than Plato or Seneca Seain, would all be recorded in the histories of Orosius and others whom Dante read, with dates and possibly portraits Capaneus, one of the ”Seven against Thebes,” is ical; but as the utterer of the earliest profession of reasoned atheism[44] he could hardly be omitted as the typical blasphemer Thethe flatterers She does not attain even to the dignity of aonly a character in a play of Terence, and borrowed by Dante froest instance on record of the ”realization” of a drae

FOOTNOTES:

[43] See p 102

[44] ”Primus in orbe Deos fecit timor” (Statius, _Thebaid_, iii

661)

BY A J BUTLER, MA

THE PURGATORY OF DANTE ALIGHIERI

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